…for the first time ever, more young people say they’d prefer to live in a socialist country over a capitalist one. Whether it’s free healthcare, free college tuition, or universal basic income, students around America increasingly support higher taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for these progressive policies. But would they support similar policies if they had skin in the game? …Campus Reform‘s Cabot Phillips went to Florida International University in Miami to test the waters on a “Socialist GPA” policy in which students with higher GPAs would be forced to “spread the wealth” and give some of their GPA points to students with lower GPAs. Despite the overwhelming number of students who initially said they’d support socialist policies, few agreed to go along with such a plan.

Interestingly, the students actually are quite perceptive when they apply incentives in their own lives.

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep so I don’t know if that would be fair,” one student said, while another answered no because “I like, study all day for my grades.” Yet another student, after expressing her support for socialism in America conceded, “I guess it would be kind of hypocritical for me to say no.” Another student, trying to justify his refusal to abide by such a policy, said, “you study for your grades, and they reflect how much time you’re studying.”

As a wonky economist, the first thing I wondered about is how young people would react if they were asked about a small amount of redistribution (say 1/10th of a point of a GPA) compared to a large amount of redistribution (a full point of GPA).

I’m guessing they would realize that the damage of the latter would be more than 10 times the damage of the former – which is exactly the same thing you find when you examine the deadweight losses of ever-higher tax rates.

Two final points.

First, many young people don’t understand socialism. They think it’s just a proxy for caring. Or even for being sociable. It’s incumbent on advocates of freedom to help them understand the adverse implications (i.e., redistributing money is just as bad as redistributing GPAs).

Second, it won’t be easy to make an ethical appeal to young people if they perceive (and many do) that capitalism is the same as cronyism. Which is why self-styled conservatives (or Trumpians) who support favors for special interests do a lot of damage to the cause of freedom.

P.S. Since they are huge net losers from the current system, young people should be very amenable to a message of genuine entitlement reform.